In order to help foster a stronger community for women in tech, the UT Dallas Computer Science Department has hosted a monthly lecture series called the Grace Series since the Fall of 2015. The Grace Series recognizes women and their accomplishments. The Grace Series aims to offer fresh perspectives and different approaches to navigating the technology field, whether it be in academia or industry. The Spring 2023 Grace Series has started off this semester with Dr. Ling Liu of the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The Grace Series Talks at UT Dallas generally feature a wide range of speakers, including UT Dallas Computer Science and Software Engineering alumni, UT Dallas CS/SE professors, as well as other distinguished female and male technologists in the field. Drs. Pushpa Kumar, Janell Straach, and Linda Morales conceived the UT Dallas Grace Series after attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference (GHC) several years ago. Through the years, additional faculty members have become involved with the series, including Drs. Karen Mazidi, Bhavani Thuraisingham, Mehra N. Borazjany, Gity Karami, and Anjum Chida. The conference, fittingly named after the woman who helped pioneer computer programming, Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper, has involved presentations designed to bring research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Every year, GHC brings together the community of female and male technologists, highlighting the best minds in computing and spotlighting the contributions of women to computing. The UT Dallas Computer Science Grace Series lectures are fashioned after the GHC Conference format.
Dr. Ling Liu of the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology was featured as the first spring 2023 Grace Series speaker. Dr. Liu is a Professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Institute of Technology. She directs research programs in the Distributed Data Intensive Systems Lab (DiSL), examining various aspects of big data-powered artificial intelligence (AI) systems and machine learning (ML) algorithms and analytics, including performance, availability, privacy, security, and trust. In her talk titled “Ensemble Learning for Dirty Data,” Dr. Liu provided an overview of a diversity-centric ensemble learning framework developed at Georgia Tech, including methodologies and algorithms for measuring, enforcing, and combining multiple neural networks by improving generalization performance of the overall system and maximizing ensemble utility and resilience to dirty data. (click here to watch her talk)
In addition to the technical aspects of her talk, Dr. Liu also discussed experiences and lessons learned throughout her academic journey and the importance of open-ended learning, lifelong learning, and learning from interactions with diverse scholars. Toward the end of her talk, she listed her top ten lessons she has learned throughout her career. First, she advised attendees to read broadly, “I found that reading broadly and not staying on one specific topic is very helpful within research activities, which can help you create a greater understanding.” The second item on her top ten list was to advise students to be open-minded and stay problem-driven. Her third tip was to be collaborative and learn from others. The fourth item on her list is to always be ambitious and persistent. The next three lessons in her top ten included finding a good mentor, keeping a positive energy, and being grateful to the people who appreciate you. Finally, her last three tips included encouragement to play to your strengths, believe in yourself, and take care of yourself.
Dr. Liu is an elected IEEE Fellow, a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award (2012), and a recipient of the best paper award from numerous top venues, including IEEE ICDCS, WWW, ACM/IEEE CCGrid, IEEE Cloud, IEEE ICWS. Dr. Liu has served on the editorial board of over a dozen international journals and has served as the editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Service Computing (2013-2016). Currently, she is the editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Internet Computing (since 2019). Dr. Liu is a frequent keynote speaker in top-tier venues in Big Data, AI and ML systems and applications, Cloud Computing, Services Computing, Privacy, Security, and Trust. The USA National Science Foundation primarily supports her current research under CISE programs, with additional funding from IBM and CISCO.
Since the inception of the UT Dallas Grace Series in the spring of 2015, a total of thirty-eight inspiring women and men have spoken, including:
- Bhavani Thuraisingham, Louis A. Beecherl Jr. Distinguished Professor, UT Dallas CS Professor, and Executive Director of the UT Dallas Cyber Security Research and Education Institute (CSI) (click here for her story)
- Lily Wu, UT Dallas CS Professor and Director of the Data Communication and Data Management (DCDM) Laboratory (click here for her story)
- I-Ling Yen, UT Dallas CS Professor (click here for her story)
- Ranran Feng, UT Dallas CS Professor (click here for her story)
- Sanda Harabagiu, UT Dallas CS Professor, Erik Jonsson School Research Initiation Chair, and Director of the UT Dallas Human Language Technology Research Institute (HLTRI) (click here for her story)
- Rym Zalila-Wenkstern, UT Dallas CS Professor and Director of the Multi-Agent and Visualization Systems lab(click here for her story)
- Inga H. Musselman, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost for The University of Texas at Dallas (click here for her story)
- Jo Zhang of Fujitsu Laboratories of America (click here to read her story),
- Farokh Bastani, UT Dallas CS Professor, Excellence in Education Chair, and Director of the UT Dallas site of the NSF Net-centric and Cloud Software and Systems Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (NSF NCSS I/UCRC) (click here to read his story)
- Peggy Shadduck, Director of both the Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) STEM Institute and of the Dallas/North Texas STEM Degree Accelerator Program (click here to read her story)
- Lymari Ames of Cisco Systems (click here to read her story)
- Romelia Flores an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Master Inventor (click here to read her story)
- Jill Blanchar, a Bank of America Information Security Executive (click here to read her story)
- Lisa Frey, State Farm Scrum Master (click here to read her story)
- Kimberly Snipes, USAA, VP, Chief Information Officer (click here to read her story)
- Catherine Walsh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Loss Prevention for Johnson Controls’ Tyco Retail Solutions
- Nimmi Kannankutty, Deputy Division Director in the Division of Graduate Education (DGE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
- Karen Mazidi, UT Dallas CS Professor (click here to view her slides from her Grace Series Talk titled “Discovering Your Strengths”)
- Grace Kaldawi, Senior Software Engineer for Capital One Auto Finance, Amazon Web Services Certified Solutions Architect, and UT Dallas CS Alumnus (click here to read more)
- Sydeaka Watson, Senior Data Scientist at Korelasi Data Insights, LLC, an independent analytics consulting company (click here to read more)
- Ewa Musial, Senior Software Engineer at Blackhawk Network (click here to read more or click here to view slides from her presentation)
- Janell Straach, Rice University CS Professor, former UT Dallas CS professor, and one of the Grace Series founders (click here to read more or click here to view slides from her presentation)
- Uni Yost, CEO/Founder of GoAskJay (click here to read more or click here to view slides from her presentation)
- Smita Bakshi, President, and Co-Founder of zyBooks (click here to read more or click here to view slides from her presentation)
- Bhavani Thuraisingham, Louis A. Beecherl Jr. Distinguished Professor, UT Dallas CS Professor, and Executive Director of the UT Dallas Cyber Security Research and Education Institute (CSI) (click here to watch her talk)
- Betty Stewart, Provost, Executive Vice-President for Academic Affairs and tenured Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Texas at Dallas (click here to watch her talk)
- Neeti Khaitan Gupta, President and CEO of Accelerate Consulting Inc. (click here to watch her talk)
- Juliet G. Odima, CSM, CSPO, Executive Director, STEAM Achievers Associate Vice President, and Director, School of Data Science and Analytics, Colaberry Inc. (click here to watch her talk)
- Seda Mauer, Digital Accessibility Consultant at Seda Maurer Consulting (click here to watch her talk)
- Shobana Radhakrishnan, Director of Engineering for Android TV at Google (click here to watch her talk)
- Stephanie Adams, UT Dallas Erik Jonsson School Dean and Lars Magnus Ericsson Chair at The University of Texas at Dallas (click here to watch her talk)
- Elisa Bertino, a Samuel D. Conte Professor of Computer Science Cyber2Slab at Purdue University (click here to watch her talk)
- Fanny Dunagan, CEO & LinkedIn Content Strategist at Pathlynks (click here to watch her talk)
- Tamara Bassam, Program Committee member for the DFW Alliance of Technology and Women (Click here to watch her talk)
- Daphne Yao, Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, Elizabeth and James E. Turner Jr. ’56 Faculty Fellow and CACI Faculty Fellow (click here to watch her talk)
- Maral Mesmakhosroshahi, Deep Learning Researcher at Microsoft, and Founder and President of Iranian Women in Computing, a nonprofit organization supporting Iranian women in tech in the United States (click here to watch her talk)
- Bhavani Thuraisingham, Louis A. Beecherl Jr. Distinguished Professor, UT Dallas CS Professor, and Executive Director of the UT Dallas Cyber Security Research and Education Institute (CSI) (Click here to watch her talk)
- Dr. Ling Liu, Professor in the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology (click here to watch her talk)
